


Consanguinity

by Ustuura



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, MWPP Era, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1793143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ustuura/pseuds/Ustuura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again, Sirius leaves Grimmauld Place for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consanguinity

“You don’t have to,” he whispers. 

“Stop.”

“Do you even know, Regulus? What they do?” he hisses in his brother’s ear. Regulus’s head is bowed. “Can you do this” He shakes the newspaper clipping in Regulus’s face. **Six Muggles found dead in Essex, Evidence of Magical torture. Death Eaters suspected.**

“Sirius, it’s none of your business. You picked your side.” Sirius stands at his brother’s back. He is a little taller, could rest on Regulus’s shoulder, put his nose in his black hair. He smells like Number 12. 

Sirius pauses. “I picked my side,” he says slowly. “Did you pick yours?”

“Get out of my room, Sirius.”

“You don’t have to,” he pitches his voice is low, urgent, pitches his brother an impetus. 

“What if I want to? What do you know about it, Sirius? Nothing! Get out of my room, now. You don’t. Belong. Here.” 

Sirius snaps. He kicks the box on the floor at their feet, and flimsy death notices flutter into the air. “Regulus you don’t-!” and Sirius chokes as he is grabbed by the neck and yanked backward, the cold buzz of magic at his throat.

“Get away!”she shrieks, and he is released. “DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK THAT WAY IN MY HOUSE!” He splutters, trips, stands again. His mother is in the doorway. Her eyes are bright, hair disheveled and piled on her head. She’s either been drinking or she’s manic, maybe both. Sirius makes to push past her, into the hallway. He’s heading for his room. 

“You’re a heartless bitch, you know that,” he murmurs, to her neck as he passes. His mother is within inches of his height. As soon as the words pass his lips, he knows he gone too far. 

He’s not three feet away before the dust-quiet is split by a crack and his mother’s curse flies. _Flagellus_

Underneath his muggle t-shirt he feels hot, sharp lines of pain, and dark red blood flows freely. The thought flashes through his mind, of all things, that his mother has never used that kind of curse on him before, the kind that leaves scars. 

His mother is still advancing, and Sirius backs down the hallway. Over her shoulder he can see his brother’s wide eyes. He casts around absently, his finger’s flex. His mother opens her mouth again, wand raised like the butcher’s knife. “Accio!” he yells, sudden panic between his teeth. He reaches blindly, and his wand flies into his hand, blessedly solid and long. He doesn’t hear what his mother says, only her lips moving, her eyes on fire. “Protego!” his voice is too loud, but they don’t learn non-verbal until next term and he almost laughs, to think that defense against the dark arts has become defense against his mother. 

She throws two, three curses, red, silver, and yellow, and Sirius is running for the door. He’s tripping over every step and on his way, he crashes into the walls, knocking down as much as he can while the pain in his shoulder and his back goads him on. His shield charm falters, at the foot of the steps. Walburga Black is a powerful witch and her spells are reducing relics to dust all around his head. He can’t help but think that if she wanted to hit him, she could. 

“You’re wrong Sirius Black, you will live to regret it!” she screams, her voice rough and high.

“If I regret anything it’s that I used that I used to think this was right!” he screams right back. “You’re worthless, Mother, you’re worthless as a person and a witch, you failed! Look at this,” he gesture wildly to himself, a stray spell shooting from his wand into the wallpaper. Sirius is in muggle clothes, streaked with his own blood, the heir of the House of Black. His hair is long and swinging, and his eyes match Walburga’s.

“Loathsome! Scum! Scourge of my House,” every word punctuated by a small explosion. “You’re a traitor, Sirius Black! Traitor to your blood, you’re traitor to your blood-” 

“Where did you go wrong with me, Mum?” Sirius yells over her. “Gryffindor! First on the tree in centuries! Blood Traitors! Half-Breeds!” Sirius is a Black too, by more than name, and he knows how to be cruel. He knows which words will eat at his mother later. Now he’s standing at the head in the foyer, before the door. He’s ready to go, he’s been ready for months. He just wants to make sure he inflicts what damage he can, before. 

“I hate you” he says, deadly quiet. She screams again. People say the Blacks are mad, just beneath the surface. They’re right. 

“You are a fool. A traitor. Stupid, gullible, worthless, scum” she elaborates. “A-”

“-a fag,” Sirius supplies, loudly “how’s that?” He aims to shock and wound. He is well aware that words can hurt. Before he can react, a spell erupts from his mother’s wand, hits him square in the mouth. His lip is split and he tastes metal. He touches his face, leans against the door, breathing hard. 

Several things happen at once, then. Sirius summons his broom, which is in his room, and which he hasn’t really ridden in years. As it flies through the air, his mother’s eyes follow, it tracing, until they land on his face. He looks her in the eye.

“This blood,” he whispers, he spits, on the floor, at her feet, “is worthless” Her eyes go wide, and suddenly,

“Crucio!”

Pain worse than Sirius has ever experienced in his life arcs through his body: sharp, hot streaks like whips, aching throbs along his skin, he feels as though every follicle of hair in on his body is being ripped out, he feels tangible darts of magic ripping through his viscera, it’s as though he’s being torn apart alive, a vivisection. He was not expecting this. 

Everything goes dark, and then the pain is gone, but he’s shaking and coughing, doesn’t know how he will stand. As it turns out, he doesn’t have to. 

In a blur, the door bursts open, light streams into his eyes, and he finds himself lying face-up on the concrete sidewalk of Grimmauld Place. 

*

By the time Sirius can lift his head, the house is gone. He knows vaguely in an isolated part of his mind that he will never go back. It is the beginning of August, and he’s covered in sweat. Still, he wishes it were warmer. He shakes. The air is thick and heavy and he thinks he might vomit, and then he does, on the light, grimy pavement, over the handle of his broom. 

Seven minutes that feel like instantaneous days pass before he gets to his feet. His head is still filled with a buzzing white noise that echoes with his flat-footed steps. His trainers slap the ground. He is having a hard time forming thoughts, the world around him registered in sporadic revelations. He picks up his broom, and has no idea where to go. 

He has lived in London all his life, but he doesn’t know the city. His feet are moving him, though. He just needs to get away from the house. _House_ , he thinks, _home_ , with a sick swoop. _Hogwarts_ , he thinks, _family_ , he thinks, _James_. He suddenly feels like he’s going to cry. 

At the corner of the street, he ducks into an alleyway. The walls are high, red brick, radiating the heat they have absorbed, August, summer heat. There are only weeks until September first. 

He kicks off the ground, hard. Pebbles jump away from his toes. He rises, a sense of heady vertigo as lines of brick slide past, and then he clears the building, keeps rising; up and up, until the city of London is spread before him. For the first time in his life, he sees the River Thames from above. 

He leans forward, turns his broom, still gripping his wand tight, handle to knuckle to handle. He flies, towards the countryside, towards James, towards the rest of his life. Thunderheads are gathering on the horizon. 

At home, his mother lights a cigarette. 

*

By the time he touches down in the Potters’ front garden, the storm has come and passed, and now only a hot mist hangs in the air, and an occasional fat droplet smacks him in the forehead. He’s soaked, and despite the warmth, he has gooseflesh up and down his arms, and he’s starting to get stiff. He stands in the grass, and breathes in. It must be midnight, or close to it, but it’s summertime, and there are yellow lights in the windows. He catches a honeysuckle breeze. 

It’s the kind of evening where he should have been here in the first place. Where he and James, Peter and Remus should be sitting on the roof, blowing smoke rings into the stars, or else shut up in James’s room, the four of them in humid laughter, waiting out the storm. 

At the stoop, his chest tightens of its own accord. He suddenly doesn’t know what he’s going to say. He knocks. 

For a moment, there’s nothing, and then there’s a series of quick, tumbling thuds as someone races down the stairs. The door opens, and there stands James, shirtless, his hair sticking up in all directions, wearing his glasses and striped cotton pajama bottoms.

“Jesus-bloody-f- Sirius.” Sirius’s throat feels hoarse. 

“Hey,”

“She didn’t,”

Sirius coughs, and shifts his broom, and then James is stepping aside, pulling him in, yelling for his mother. 

Both of James’s parents appear at the top of the stairs. When they see him, Mrs. Potter’s face goes through a sequence of shocked to angry to concerned to determined, and she hurries down. James’s father’s eyebrows contract, and he follows his wife. 

Sirius is surrounded then by the murmuring Potters, and James, who is still holding his wrist. Sirius stands still. 

“Unbelievable…”

“Complete lunatics, all of them, I’ve told you,” 

Mrs. Potter leads him into the kitchen, sits him in the chairs, and asks him if he’s hurt. Sirius’s responses are muffled and largely incoherent. 

“Just… there,” he winces and strips off his shirt at her urging. Mrs. Potter tuts, and then falls silent at the state of his back. She uncaps a phial of potion from the medicine cabinet and smoothes it gingerly into the cuts. She grips his arm when he winces. 

James has disappeared, but he returns moments later with a towel and a pair clean pajamas. Sirius goes into the bathroom to put them on, catching sight of himself in the mirror. He looks blank-eyed and very pale. 

When he emerges, Mrs. Potter is wearing an apron over her floral nightgown, and a pot of soup stirs itself on the stove. James is sitting at the table, and looks up when he comes in. He looks like he’s about to say something, until his mother places a bowl in front of Sirius, and his friend’s mouth is occupied. Mr. Potter joins them a minute later. He looks much like James, the same wild hair, though his is graying and thin on top, and he pushes his glasses up his nose in the same way as his son. He comes over and squeezes Sirius’s shoulder, and Sirius feels a bit like a sick child being comforted by his dad. It’s not an experience he’s had before. 

After Sirius has eaten, Mr. Potter gruffly tells him to get some rest, and James’s mum sends James upstairs to get extra pillows and blankets. Sirius makes to leave too, but Mrs. Potter doesn’t let him. 

Before he knows what is happening, she has pulled him into a hug. Her arms are warm around him and she holds him tight to her.

“You know that you’re not going back, Sirius. You’re staying here, now,”

“Thank you-,” he begins, and finds that his voice comes out very soft. 

“This is your home. We’re your family. We always have been.”

Sirius suddenly feels a lump in his throat, his breath hitches on the inhale. 

“Thank-” he tries again, but his voice catches. 

“shh, you’re all right now,” Mrs. Potter murmurs, lifting her hand to stroke his hair. His face is in the crook of her neck, and ridiculously, unwillingly, he melts into her. She’s close and warm, and he’s never had a mother’s hug like this except from her. To his horror, he feels a tear running down his nose, dripping onto her shirt. The buzzing has left his head, and all at once, the thoughts he hasn’t been having all day are all he can feel. 

James’s mum doesn’t say anything else, just pulls him closer, a hand on the back of his hair. He’s sixteen and a few days old, and he continues to shake in her arms. He shudders like a child, and she rocks them on her feet until Sirius can breathe.

Eventually, mortified, Sirius pulls away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

“’m sorry, Mrs. Potter,” he mumbles, with something have a sniffle and half a laugh. He tries to mop up her collar.

“Don’t be silly,”

“Thanks, anyway. For everything.”

She reaches out to pat his cheek, and steps around him out of the kitchen, leaving him grateful for the privacy. 

James is sitting at the top of the stairs, which are lined with family photos. Sirius is oddly touched to see a picture of the Marauders, decked out in Gryffindor red and gold waving to the camera is among them. 

He sticks out a hand to pull James up, meeting his eyes, and there is some imprecise shoving down the hall, until they reach James’s room. Sirius flops onto the bed, feeling drained. James sits down too after pulling the door shut. 

“Let’s never speak of this again,” says Sirius into his knees. 

“What, you’re heroic escape from the jaws of oppression?” James offers, with half a sympathetic smile. Sirius snorts. 

“I cried on your mum.”

“You cried on McGonagall after you fell off the astronomy tower in first year,” he says, which makes Sirius laugh again and sort of love James for this.

“Right, which is why we never speak of that event either.” Sirius concludes, as James huffs, and slumps over onto James, his best friend in the world. James is relieved. He was more worried when he saw Sirius than he will ever admit in words. He doesn’t pester Sirius for details, but before long, they are on their backs on James’s bed, and Sirius is telling him anyway. 

“She Crusioed me,” he says to the ceiling, and James feels a pitch of anger for Sirius’s mother.

“My dad can get her, for that. With the ministry. She’ll go to Azkaban.”

“No, she won’t. Not my f--, not the Blacks.” Sirius’s voice has gone flat again. 

James feels around in the dark, without his glasses, patting Sirius’s stomach clumsily.

“Well. You have us now. We’re brothers, remember?” Of course he remembers the pact they made before parting after first year. “And the Marauders, too. We’ll write Moony and Wormtail tomorrow, see if they can come down.”

“Alright, Prongs, you’re starting to sound like your mum,” Sirius says, perfunctorily, but internally he is blessing the Potters, and his heart has warmed at the thought of his friends, and returning to school soon. 

He’s not okay, not really. This is the last night he will be able to sleep though for a week without waking up in a cold sweat, shaking from the effects of imagined unforgivable curses. Throughout his sixth year, Sirius will dream of his mother, sometimes screaming, sometimes not, and will always wake angry. He will not talk to Regulus in the halls. But for now, he’s exhausted, and within minutes, he has fallen asleep, James pressed against his side.


End file.
